Dear Nina and Dmytro,

thanks for the interesting discussion on 'kasi.na'. The
word 'kasi.na' as an adjective means whole or entire. However, in
this case, in meditation practice, it does not mean anything close
to a 'totality-dimension' as Ven. Thanissaro translated. 'Kasi.na'
is, in this case, the name of a meditation subject or method. And,
using this method, a meditator has the choice of one of ten objects:
earth, water, fire, etc. The idea then is to focus the mind
_entirely_ (i.e. kasi.na) on the object to achieve one-pointedness.

Therefore, considering the suggestions you have made, I would
suggest as follow:

pathaviikasi.na (n) kasina (object) of earth.
- pathavii (f) earth.
- kasi.na (n) a method of meditation.

aapokasi.na (n) kasina (object) of water. ... etc.

What do you think?

Another thing that I have been thinking about is the color 'niila'.
The PED has niila as blue-green, in Japanese, the color aoi [Çत]
has similar meaning. The same goes for the Chinese colors bi [±Ì],
cang [²Ô], and even qing [Çà], which is usually translated as green
but can also means blue or black (as in yuqing [ðöÇà]). I wonder if
there are any such resemblance in other Indoeuropean or Asian
languages.

Nina, thanks also for the other corrections and suggestions. Yahoo!
Groups has recently made some modifications such that the messages
are no longer presented and ordered in the way they were before.
The "Up Thread" function is no longer available. The messages are
now collected as 'topics', and linking all the messages would create
a large 'topic', making it messy and possibly unmanageable. Hence, I
would be starting a new 'topic' (as Y! Groups call it) for each
logical unit of the AN.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, nina van gorkom wrote:

It actually means: all encompassing. That is why the device that is
prepared in the case of earth, is a circle of earth. Everything is
earth. We fight for it, want to have things, but in fact, they are
only earth. This leads to less clinging to sense objects, the aim of
samatha. When we translate with totality, I am not sure whether this
is generally clear to people.

I looked in Netti Pakara.na, 89: ten bases of wholeness:
kasi.naayatana. Footnote says: whole, entire. This is about what you
mean by totality.

Some texts leave kasi.na untranslated. It is to be preferred to
leave kasi.na in brackets. Or the word *device* is used. Perhaps it
depends on one's personal preference. If one uses totality, it may
not be clear that it is a specific meditation subject.

> op 14-06-2006 14:14 schreef Dmytro O. Ivakhnenko op aavuso@...:
>
> In Sutta 'kasina' does not mean a circular device. I like the
Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation 'totality'.
>
> [4] "There are these ten totality-dimensions. Which ten? One
perceives the earth-totality above, below, all-around: non-dual,
unlimited.